


Outside on the Lawn, Birds Are Fighting

by Ilthit



Series: JS&MN Modern AUs [3]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baking, Creepy, Depressing, Extramarital Affairs, F/F, F/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, No Mental Healthcare, Not Beta Read, Relationship Problems, Stalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24822526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Modern AU take on the story of Arabella and the Moss-Oak.
Relationships: Arabella Strange/Jonathan Strange, Emma Pole/Arabella Strange
Series: JS&MN Modern AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791511
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020, Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen





	Outside on the Lawn, Birds Are Fighting

_They’re acting like she’s me_ , thought Arabella as her face smiled and her fingers dug into the dough. _She’s not me._

Brandy handed the box of raisins over the table, and Bell's voice thanked her. The bakery was short-staffed, so they had the new kid up front while the rest of them were making the day’s exclusives. Bell’s hands kept kneading with their usual efficiency. Her face and her mouth reacted automatically. Even if sometimes the wrong words dropped out, her expressions were still normal enough that no-one raised the matter. 

Last night her body had lain in bed next to Jonathan, JJ’s little furry body curled up against her back, and the autopilot had stopped working. The body had not moved for seven hours. She had not slept. _It_ had not slept, merely stared straight into the darkness and waited for the morning’s routine instructions to kick in. 

Still she had dreamed, somehow, of black sucking earth and rotten roots, of slowly choking for want of water while surrounded by it on all sides, of rain pummeling the bog. 

She knew she needed help, needed to see someone, but the robot had no instructions for that. 

\- 

“They act like I’m dead,” she told Emma. “I’m not dead.”

“Yeah, they do that.”

Somehow she could talk to Emma directly through the body. Emma saw her. She understood. 

Walter Pole’s— _Sir_ Walter Pole’s—house in the country was a restored 17th century relic, not quite the size of a grand manor but filled with that old-world feel, from show-rooms stuffed with antiques to quiet, cleanly furnished backrooms where people could actually live. It seemed to Bell a metaphor of something, even as she sipped the morning tea in the breakfast nook, listening to birds fighting on the freshly cut lawn outside. Emma’s wounded hand was at the back of her neck, playing with the short hair there. She was getting overdue a haircut.

Jonathan and Walter had agreed they could both use a little quiet time, even as their own careers kept them in London and Oxford, and what place would be better than the one just down the road from Richard? He could come in and check on them sometimes. It was good to have friends nearby.

“I want to bake something,” Bell declared. 

\- 

Knotted bread, cheese and pesto wheels, a fruitcake for later or to give to the church sale that Saturday. Arabella was elbows-deep in flour and almost happy this way. Emma pressed against her back as she washed her bowls, the fall of her hair tickling the back of her neck. 

Nothing was solved. Nothing was over. Nobody was going to come and get them out of their own heads or out of Richard’s orbit. Jonathan had read books to try and figure out how to help her, but he didn’t understand, couldn't line up any psychiatric theories with what was going on with his wife. He was just waiting for her to come back to him and once again be his constant support, the sensible wife who kept his feet on the ground. _I don’t know what I’d do without you_ , he’d said more than once, but Bell had always known: The same thing he always did, but more of it. She’d seen his Facebook activity die down. She knew.

Walter had tried. It had to be said he had tried. It just hadn't got him very far.

But if they locked themselves up together like this, they could see each other and be seen by one another, and have fresh-baked cheese and pesto wheels for lunch with apples from Walter’s orchard, and wait hand-in-hand until Richard inevitably showed up. They could curl up together at night and feel one another’s heartbeat and breath, and the robot would be under Bell's command again, if only for a little while. 

She had loved Emma before, when Emma had been broken and she had been whole. She loved her now neither of them quite worked right, and she loved her most those moments when the exhaustion lifted enough to see a sliver of the woman underneath it.   
  
They begun kissing, spent whole afternoons kissing, until Emma fell into dreamless sleep in Bell's arms under the clack of the decades-old ceiling fan. The sun and heat burned away the dreams of bogs. 

Jonathan was in Venice now, she heard. 

Nobody was coming for them. 

Nobody except Richard. 


End file.
